Toward Wheeled Mobility on Vertically Challenging Terrain: Platforms, Datasets, and Algorithms

Abstract-- Most conventional wheeled robots can only move in flat environments and simply divide their planar workspaces into free spaces and obstacles. Deeming obstacles as nontraversable significantly limits wheeled robots' mobility in realworld, extremely rugged, off-road environments, where part of the terrain (e.g., irregular boulders and fallen trees) will be treated as non-traversable obstacles. To improve wheeled mobility in those environments with vertically challenging terrain, we present two wheeled platforms with little hardware modification compared to conventional wheeled robots; we collect datasets of our wheeled robots crawling over previously non-traversable, vertically challenging terrain to facilitate data-driven mobility; we also present algorithms and their experimental results to show that conventional wheeled robots have previously unrealized potential of moving through vertically challenging terrain. I. INTRODUCTION Building mobile robots that are capable of reaching as workspaces into free spaces (traversable) or obstacles (nontraversable), many places as possible has long been a dream for many Indeed, autonomous mobile robots have in the real world, especially outdoor off-road environments ventured into remote deserts for scientific exploration [1], explored where vertical protrusions from the ground are not uncommon. Achieving reliable and robust in conquering requires driving wheeled robots over irregular mobility in these environments is challenging due to the and complex obstacles and is therefore much more difficult intricate nature of the terrain, the complex vehicle-terrain compared to simply driving on non-flat environments.